by David Archer
“It’s me,” Noah said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m better now,” Sarah said. “I thought you weren’t supposed to call in until you got to Arkansas?”
“Well, it became necessary, so I figured I’d take the opportunity to call you, first. I need to get a message to the Dragon Lady, but I don’t want it coming through anyone connected directly to me. Do you still have Elaine’s number?”
“Elaine? Yeah, why?”
“I need to get a message to her father,” Noah said. “That’s the safest way I can think of.”
“What is it? I’ll call her as soon as we get off the phone.”
“No, I don’t want to take a chance that her phone records might be vulnerable. I’ll use a throwaway to call her, and I think I can disguise my voice enough she won’t know it’s me. That way, if anyone finds out she relayed the message to her father, it won’t lead back to you.”
Sarah hesitated, but when she spoke again, he could hear a smile in her voice. “Okay, I guess that makes sense.” She gave him the number and then asked how he was doing.
“I’m okay,” he said. “You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“Yeah, well, comes with being a girl. I miss you. I know it’s only supposed to be a week before I see you again, but right now it sounds like forever.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Noah said. “Try to keep yourself busy. Is Neil there?”
“Yeah, he’s out in the living room. You caught me just after I got out of the shower. I figured I’d take advantage of the opportunity to do my weeping where no one could see me.”
“Go back out and spend time with him. He’s supposed to be your little brother, now, so get used to treating him like one. From what I’ve seen, older sisters always pick on their little brothers. That shouldn’t be too hard, will it?”
She chuckled at him. “Oh, I’m already pretty good at it. We played rummy a little while ago, and I beat him five games straight. You should have heard him—he was whining like a big baby.”
“Then go play some more. I like it when you laugh.”
Sarah was quiet for a moment. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said anything like that to me. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, I promise you. I’m just learning to deal with the fact that you reach parts of me I thought were dead.”
From the sound of her voice, the smile must have gotten a lot wider. “That’s so sweet,” she said. “I love you, Noah.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Noah felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward, and the sensation was so unfamiliar that he turned and looked at himself in the mirror on the dresser. He stared at his reflection for a moment and then said, “I love you, too.”
Sarah giggled. “I love hearing you say that,” she said, “even if…”
“I love you, Sarah,” Noah said, cutting her off. “And in case you can’t hear it, you actually just made me smile. A real smile—I mean, it actually caught me off guard.”
“Noah,” she said, and all of the mirth seemed to be gone from her voice. “As much as I’ve always wanted that to happen, now would not be a good time for you to suddenly get your emotions back. This mission—we need your Vulcan brain, babe. This is no time to go soft.”
“Relax,” Noah said. “I’m not feeling anything else, just something akin to pleasure when you said you love me. I’ve been like this so long, I don’t think I can ever come completely out of it.”
Sarah sighed. “Okay, but don’t scare me like that. I worry enough about you as it is.”
“I guess that comes with being married, or maybe with loving someone. I’m not sure I know how to worry, but I know that I think about you a lot when we’re not together, wonder how you are, that sort of thing. Anyway, I need to call Elaine and get rid of these burner phones. You stick with Neil, and I’ll see both of you in a week.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, “but do me one favor. Would you—would you say it again?”
“I love you, Sarah,” Noah said. “I’ll see you soon.”
He ended the call and immediately took the sim card and battery out of the phone. He used his Swiss Army knife to break the sim card and then flushed it down the toilet before turning on the other phone and dialing the number Sarah had given him.
“Hello?” Elaine’s voice sounded sleepy and cautious.
“Urgent, urgent,” Noah said, affecting a European accent and raising his voice an octave. “Message for your father. Someone high in organization feeding information about missions to mole. Urgent, urgent.”
“What?” Elaine sputtered, but Noah ended the call and immediately dismantled the phone. The broken sim card followed its fellow down the toilet, and the rest of the parts went into the pocket of Noah’s leather jacket.
Noah went to the bathroom and took a quick shower, then climbed into bed. Two minutes later he was asleep.
Noah was awake before the late-autumn sun managed to light up the morning. He dressed quickly and left the hotel, dropping the remains of the throwaway phones into a trash can near the parking lot. He used the GPS on his own phone to get directions to the address from the text message he’d received the night before and pointed the Cadillac toward it.
The text message said that the target family was Jim and Caroline Dickinson and their children, Rachel, Amber, and Jimmy. It took him only twenty minutes to get to their neighborhood, still well before 7:00 a.m.
He cruised past the house, a nice-looking ranch-style in an open subdivision, and parked in the driveway of a house with a For Sale sign in front of it that sat only four doors down. He could see the front of the target’s house clearly, but it was nearly an hour later when the garage door opened and a car backed out into the street. He used the zoom function of his phone’s camera to ascertain that the car had only one occupant: the woman from the photograph. She turned the car in his direction and cruised past a moment later.
Noah watched for a few minutes more, and then a school bus stopped in front of the house beside the one he was watching. All three of the children came out at once, as did other children from several other houses on the block, and Noah sat there and took their pictures as they climbed onto the bus and rode away. Once the bus was out of sight, he started the Cadillac and backed out, then drove back to the target’s house and pulled into the driveway there. He parked close to the garage door and in the middle of the driveway so that a car inside could not get past his own.
He stepped out of the Cadillac, walked up to the front door, and rang the doorbell. A moment later the door opened, and Jim Dickinson smiled out at him.
“Can I help you?”
“Actually, you can,” Noah said, and then he reached out and took Dickinson by his throat, closing his hand tightly as the fellow tried to jump backward. Noah followed, kicking the door shut behind himself, and shoved Dickinson into a chair.
Dickinson sat there in shock, staring up at the big blond man who had seemingly attacked him for no reason. “What the…”
“Mr. Dickinson,” Noah said, “I represent someone who is seeking to do business with your wife. Apparently, she has been resistant to the idea, and it’s my job to remove that resistance.” He held out his phone, showing the pictures he had just taken of the Dickinson children. “My employer wants your wife to understand that refusing to do business with him could be detrimental to the health and well-being of your family. Now, I’m sure you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to your children, would you?”
Dickinson managed to close his mouth, then swallowed hard. “No, no,” he said quietly. “But I…”
“Frankly,” Noah went on, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, either. That’s why I decided to have this private little chat with you. You need to make it clear to your wife that she needs to cooperate with my employer. You need to make it clear to her that if she does not, something very bad will almost certainly happen to one of those lovely children you just sent off to school. In order to make sure she gets the messa
ge, I’ve got to leave you with something that will be convincing.”
Noah called up the second photo from the text message on his phone and held it in front of Dickinson’s face. The man stared at it for several seconds, his eyes wide, and then he looked up at Noah again.
“I—that isn’t…”
“I don’t care who it is, and I don’t care to hear whatever ridiculous explanation you’re trying to come up with. None of that matters to me, but I showed you that photograph so that you would know that my employer can find out anything he wants to know. I need you to understand that if he can arrange to capture a photo of you in such a compromising position, then he can undoubtedly track you down no matter where you might try to go. This is to convince you that running away is not an option. Do you understand that?”
Dickinson nodded, not trusting his voice to speak.
“Now the point of this little exercise,” Noah went on, “is to give you proper motivation. However, I also need to give some to your wife. Since we both agree we don’t want anything bad to happen to your children, that means something bad has to happen to you.”
With the speed of a striking snake, Noah reached down and took hold of Dickinson’s right ear and then yanked back so hard that the ear was torn half off the man’s head. Dickinson screamed and clapped his own hand over the injured ear, but his eyes never left Noah’s face.
“Be absolutely certain you tell your wife exactly how you came to be injured, and then explain to her that this is nothing compared to what will happen to one of your children if she does not cooperate. And don’t bother trying to notify the police or give them my description, because it probably won’t be me the next time. It will be someone you’ve never seen, someone you’ll never expect. Someone you won’t see coming.” He cocked his head and looked Dickinson in the eye. “I’m going to leave now,” he said. “Do not move from that chair until you’re certain I’m gone. If I see your face at the window or the door, I will put a bullet through your head.”
Noah continued to face Dickinson as he moved toward the front door, then quickly turned and walked out. He got into his rented Cadillac and backed out of the driveway, then drove away at a sedate speed. There had been no sign of Dickinson’s face at any of the windows he could see, so he didn’t anticipate any immediate repercussions.
Noah drove toward his hotel and then stopped at a small cafe for breakfast. He sat at the counter because there was a television above it that was tuned to the local news channel. He ordered steak and eggs and was pleased to see that there was no mention of an attack on a local citizen when he finished eating a half hour later.
He drove back to the hotel and went up to his room, repacked his bag, and then googled for a charter flight back to Kansas City. He got lucky this time, because the first number he called had a plane and pilot that could be ready to go within an hour. He went down to the front desk and checked out, then drove back to the airport and turned in the car. He asked the clerk at the rental agency where he should go to catch a charter flight, and the young lady was happy to give him directions.
This time, the plane was a twin-engine turboprop model. The pilot was sitting in a lounge area just inside the building from the charter gate, and Noah had no trouble finding him.
“Are you Wilson? I’m John Babbitt, your pilot. Want me to take that bag for you?”
“I’ve got it, thanks,” Noah said.
“No problem,” Babbitt said. “Let’s get going.”
Noah followed him out to the plane and accepted the invitation to sit up front. He always enjoyed flying and had even taken the controls a few times when he was younger, flying with his grandfather before his grandparents decided he was just a little too strange. That experience had come in handy a few months earlier, when he had actually had to steal a plane and fly it out of China after rescuing Sarah.
Babbitt liked to talk, and Noah put on an act for the man, laughing at his jokes and pretending to believe some of the whopper stories the fellow told. He even managed to tell a few of his own, but Babbitt would have been shocked if he had known that Noah was telling the truth.
Talking made the flight seem shorter than it actually was, and the plane touched down at the Kansas City airport at just before noon. Noah thanked Babbitt for the ride and made his way out to the parking lot.
The Charger was sitting where he had left it, although there were a couple of men standing close by and staring at it. When Noah unlocked the door and opened it, one of them hurried over.
“Man,” the fellow said, “that’s got to be the most beautiful car I’ve ever seen. Is she fast?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Noah said, and then he slid in behind the wheel and shut the door. When he pushed the ignition button, the man standing just outside broke into a huge smile and waved as Noah backed out and drove toward the gate.
He paid for his parking and left the airport, getting back onto I-70 and driving on toward Kansas City proper. The airport sat about forty miles west of the city itself, but traffic was light and so it didn’t seem to take very long until he had crossed into Missouri. His GPS directed him to turn south onto I-49 a few minutes later, and he was almost out of the city before he decided to stop for lunch.
He pulled into a McDonald’s and ate quickly, then got back on the road. The GPS told him that he was only three hours away from his destination, and the road was clear. With his Wyatt Wilson ID tucked into a hidden compartment of his bag and the Rex Madison documents back in his wallet, Noah decided that being in character would mean breaking the speed limit. He pushed the car up to eighty-five and waved back at all the kids who smiled from the back seats of their parents’ cars as he flew past.
Three hours later, Noah parked the car in the parking lot of the federal courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He had to walk all the way around the building to get to the front door, where a pair of federal marshals required him to show his ID, then empty his pockets and put his shoes and belt into a tray that rolled through an X-ray machine. Once that was done, he stepped through a metal detector and then was allowed to collect his things and put his shoes and belt back on.
The marshals directed him to the probation office on the third floor, and he rode the elevator up. When he stepped out, signs directed him to room 319, and the receptionist there asked him his name. Noah handed over the documents he had been given for this purpose, along with his driver’s license.
“Oh, yes,” the receptionist said, “Mr. Madison. Mr. Roberts is expecting you. Just have a seat for a moment, and he’ll be right out.”
Noah sat down in one of the chairs in front of her counter and waited only a moment before Craig Roberts stepped out and walked up to him. Noah rose to his feet as Roberts extended a hand.
“Rex Madison? I’m Craig Roberts, I’ll be your new probation officer. I got all your paperwork a couple days ago, but I wasn’t actually expecting you until tomorrow.”
“Well,” Noah said, with a bit of surliness in his voice, “I figured I might as well come on over and get this out of the way. My daddy always told me to take care of the unpleasant business first, because it makes everything else seem to go even smoother.”
Roberts grinned. “Yeah, I heard you had a bit of an attitude. Come on back to my office, and let’s see how much trouble you’re going to try to give me.”
He turned and walked past the receptionist’s counter, and Noah followed him into an office. Roberts shut the door and sat down behind his desk, pointing to a chair in front of it. Noah took the seat he indicated and slouched in it as if he’d prefer to be absolutely anywhere else.
“Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? I understand you’re going to be living in Berryville?”
“Yep. My sister lives there, so I’ll be staying with her until I find a place.”
“Yeah, that’s what I got. She lives on Pleasant Street, right?”
“Right. 111 Pleasant Street,” Noah said. “Katie Madison is her name, in case you
don’t have it already.”
Roberts grinned at him again. “I’ve got it. I understand you’re coming here to look for work? What kind of work do you do?”
Noah shrugged. “Whatever I need to do,” he said. “Katie says there’s lots of opportunities over there.”
Craig Roberts look at him in the eye for a moment, his grin never leaving his face. “There’s a lot of opportunities, all right,” he said. “The question is what kind of opportunities you’re looking for. Berryville is pretty much the center of a lot of the criminal element in this part of Arkansas. You’re not looking to get hooked up with anything like that, are you?”
Noah put on an exaggerated expression of innocence. “Who, me? Hell, no, I don’t need none of that. I’ll probably look for something slinging burgers, maybe washing cars. Ain’t no way I’m going to give you a chance to send me back to Beaumont.”
“Uh-huh,” Roberts said. “Well, here’s the deal. I’ll be coming over to see you about once a month, and when I do, you’re gonna have to pee in a cup for me. As long as you manage to stay out of trouble, you and I are going to get along just fine. Understood?”
“Understood, Captain,” Noah said. “Believe me, I don’t want any more trouble than you do.”
Roberts reached down beside his desk and picked up a urine sample cup and held it out. “Bathroom is around the corner,” he said. “Try to get it at least half-full, will you?”
Noah took the cup and got up from the chair, stepped out of the office, and found the bathroom. A few moments later he returned and set the cup on Roberts’s desk. It was nearly full.
Roberts glanced at it and then grinned up at Noah. “Okay,” he said. “You checked in. That’s all till next month. If you move out of your sister’s place or change your phone number or get a job, call and let me know. Other than that, you won’t have to put up with me at all until I come to see you.”
Noah nodded. “That sounds fine to me,” he said. He turned without another word and walked out of the office, made his way down the elevator and out the front door, and then around the building to where he had left the Charger. He got back in, started the car, and followed the GPS directions to Highway 45.